Summary
This article will share partition magic software to add unallocated space so as to extend C drive on Windows XP/7/8 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2012.
C Drive Resizing Software Download
Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server to extend C drive with unallocated space on Windows Server and other Windows operating systems.
Extend C Drive with Unallocated Space
Increasing C drive (normally system partition) space without formatting hard drive or reinstalling OS in Windows 10/8/7 is a common problem. AOMEI Partition Assistant provides excellent schemes to extend C partition without data loss in Windows 7/8/10.
How to expand the OS drive of a virtual machine.; 4 minutes to read; Contributors. All; In this article. When you create a new virtual machine (VM) in a Resource Group by deploying an image from Azure Marketplace, the default OS drive is often 127 GB (some images have smaller OS disk sizes by default).Even though it’s possible to add data disks to the VM (how many depending upon. With many programs running on the system partition, your C drive space will turn red and the computer runs slowly. Always, the first thing comes to our mind is to free up C drive space to gain more storage space. But it makes no difference after a short time. Here, we will show you the effective ways to increase C drive space in Windows 10/8/7.
Want to add unallocated space to increase the size of C drive? You can run Diskpart to extend C drive on Windows Server 2003 if operating system is not installed on this drive. You can open Disk Management on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 to extend C drive if the unallocated space is right behind it. However as a matter of fact, it could be much easier to extend C drive on all Windows OS with help of a third-party partition magic tool IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server.
Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server for all Windows Server OS.
Step-by-step Guide to Extend C Drive with Unallocated Space
How to redistribute disk space in Windows Server 2003
Step 1:
Download, install and launch IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server. Right click a partition that has enough free space and select 'Resize/Move'.
Step 2:
Move the arrows to shrink the selected partition to squeeze some free space. The free space will be shown as unallocated volume.
Shrink other large partition to produce free space for C drive
Step 3:
You need to move the unallocated volume close to C drive. Then, right click C drive and select 'Resize/Move'.
Right click c drive to get started with extending c
Step 4:
Move the arrows to add the unallocated volume to C drive and then click 'Apply' button.
Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server Edition
Extend C Drive on Windows XP/7/8/Vista
For most home users, they often like to install Windows XP/7/8/Vista system. IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server is free Server partition magic software, but it is also available on Windows XP/7/8 operating system to extend C drive as long as there is unallocated space on the same hard disk. Even if there is no existing unallocated space, you can run the IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server to shrink the partition that has enough free space to squeeze some unallocated space. Besides, IM-Magic Partition Resizer Free is specially designed for Windows XP, 7, 8, and Windows Vista users to resize disk partition without any limitation.
Windows Server 2003 Extend C Drive
Windows Server 2003 is Server operating system, so you can only rely on Server partition software to extend C drive. IM-Magic Partition Resizer Serve can work on Windows Server 2003 OS to resize hard disk without repartitioning or reformatting hard disk. The partition software can not only extend C drive on Windows 2003, but also it enables you to extend C drive on Windows 2003 R2 and SBS 2003. You can extend C drive on basic hard disk and RAID 5 without reinstalling system. In addition, the partition software also supports to extend C drive on Windows 2003 VMware.
Windows 2008 Server Extend C Drive
If you are a Windows 2008 Server user, Windows built-in Disk Management can extend C drive when there is unallocated space behind the drive. Disk Management can also shrink a partition to generate some unallocated space, but it cannot move partition. If you cannot move the unallocated space close to C drive, you can rely on IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server. This partition software enables you to move partition easily without touching any data stored on the disk. This partition software can extend C drive system partition on Windows Server, so you can perform partition resizing on almost all Windows Server operating systems besides Windows Server 2008. With the partition software, you can:
* Increase size of disk partition without reformatting
* Extend C drive on Windows 2003 2008 2012, Windows SBS and Windows Server R2
* Fix low disk space on Windows Server
* Extend C drive without reinstalling system
* Extend disk partition when Diskpart and Disk Management failed
Increasing C Drive Space Two Terrabytes
Extend C Drive RAID 5 and VMware
As mentioned above, IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server supports to extend C drive on RAID 5 and extend partition in VMware disk. No matter you want to extend C drive on RAID 5 disk or extend partition in VMware, unallocated space is needed. If there is no free space on RAID5, you can add another disk to extend the RAID 5. The partition software works the same on Windows Server in VMware. You can extend C drive, system partition, boot partition and primary partition on Windows Server in VMware without losing any data or having any influence on the OS.
For Windows Server all versions > Download IM-Magic Partition Resizer Server
When you create a new virtual machine (VM) in a Resource Group by deploying an image from Azure Marketplace, the default OS drive is often 127 GB (some images have smaller OS disk sizes by default). Even though it’s possible to add data disks to the VM (how many depending upon the SKU you’ve chosen) and moreover it’s recommended to install applications and CPU intensive workloads on these addendum disks, oftentimes customers need to expand the OS drive to support certain scenarios such as following:
- Support legacy applications that install components on OS drive.
- Migrate a physical PC or virtual machine from on-premises with a larger OS drive.
Important
Resizing the OS Disk of an Azure Virtual Machine will cause it to restart.
After expanding the disks, you need to expand the volume within the OS to take advantage of the larger disk.
Note
This article has been updated to use the new Azure PowerShell Azmodule. You can still use the AzureRM module, which will continue to receive bug fixes until at least December 2020.To learn more about the new Az module and AzureRM compatibility, seeIntroducing the new Azure PowerShell Az module. ForAz module installation instructions, see Install Azure PowerShell.
Resize a managed disk
Open your Powershell ISE or Powershell window in administrative mode and follow the steps below:
Sign in to your Microsoft Azure account in resource management mode and select your subscription as follows:
Set your resource group name and VM name as follows:
Obtain a reference to your VM as follows:
Stop the VM before resizing the disk as follows:
Obtain a reference to the managed OS disk. Set the size of the managed OS disk to the desired value and update the Disk as follows:
Warning
The new size should be greater than the existing disk size. The maximum allowed is 2048 GB for OS disks. (It is possible to expand the VHD blob beyond that size, but the OS will only be able to work with the first 2048 GB of space.)
Updating the VM may take a few seconds. Once the command finishes executing, restart the VM as follows:
And that’s it! Now RDP into the VM, open Computer Management (or Disk Management) and expand the drive using the newly allocated space.
Resize an unmanaged disk
Open your Powershell ISE or Powershell window in administrative mode and follow the steps below:
Sign in to your Microsoft Azure account in resource management mode and select your subscription as follows:
Set your resource group name and VM name as follows:
Obtain a reference to your VM as follows:
Stop the VM before resizing the disk as follows:
Set the size of the unmanaged OS disk to the desired value and update the VM as follows:
Warning
The new size should be greater than the existing disk size. The maximum allowed is 2048 GB for OS disks. (It is possible to expand the VHD blob beyond that size, but the OS will only be able to work with the first 2048 GB of space.)
Updating the VM may take a few seconds. Once the command finishes executing, restart the VM as follows:
Scripts for OS disk
Below is the complete script for your reference for both managed and unmanaged disks:
Managed disks
Unmanaged disks
Resizing data disks
This article is focused primarily on expanding the OS disk of the VM, but the script can also be used for expanding the data disks attached to the VM. For example, to expand the first data disk attached to the VM, replace the OSDisk object of StorageProfile with DataDisks array and use a numeric index to obtain a reference to first attached data disk, as shown below:
Managed disk
Unmanaged disk
Similarly you may reference other data disks attached to the VM, either by using an index as shown above or the Name property of the disk:
Managed disk
Unmanaged disk
Expand the volume within the OS
Once you have expanded the disk for the VM, you need to go into the OS and expand the volume to encompass the new space. There are several methods for expanding a partition. This section covers connecting the VM using an RDP connection to expand the partition using DiskPart.
Open an RDP connection to your VM.
Open a command prompt and type diskpart.
At the DISKPART prompt, type
list volume. Make note of the volume you want to extend.At the DISKPART prompt, type
select volume <volumenumber>. This selects the volume volumenumber that you want to extend into contiguous, empty space on the same disk.At the DISKPART prompt, type
extend [size=<size>]. This extends the selected volume by size in megabytes (MB).
Next steps
You can also attach disks using the Azure portal.